Rosemary Kennedy was mentally ill!

Researchers disagree over the initial assessment of Rosemary's
condition. According to the author Laurence Leamer, Rosemary Kennedy
was "probably the first person with mental retardation in America to
receive a prefrontal lobotomy". Ronald Kessler, author of The Sins of
the Father: Joseph P. Kennedy and the Dynasty He Founded, disagrees
with this assessment. He believes that Rosemary's problem was instead
mental illness. He says its true that Rosemary had always been slower
than the other children. But as a teenager, she was able to write
endearing letters, dance, and do arithmetic. At the age of nine,
Rosemary neatly and correctly multiplied and divided: 428 ื 32 =
13696, for example.[7]

Joseph Kennedy's aide, Edward Moore, with whom Rosemary lived for
years before the Kennedy family moved to London for Kennedy's
ambassadorship, said, "She's not quite right", tapping his head.
Returning from London at the age of 22, Rosemary apparently regressed
in mental skills, became "tense and irritable, upset easily and
unpredictably tantrums rages convulsive episodes". [8]

Kathleen Kennedy's former boyfriend, John White, claimed that Kathleen
admitted to him the secret that Rosemary had learning problemsbut
what really concerned her father were "mood changes" and a "new
neurological disturbance." She added that "the family considered
Rosemary a disgrace and failure'". [9]

Kessler conducted the only interview with Dr. Watts, who "told the
author that, in his opinion, Rosemary had suffered not from mental
retardation, but from a form of depression. 'It may have been
agitated depression, you're agitated, you're shaky. You talk in an
agitated way.'"

Kessler writes, "A review of all records by the two doctors confirmed
Dr. Watt's [sic] declaration. None of the papers listed any of the
patients as being mentally retarded. According to a review in the
American Journal of Psychiatry, of all reports of lobotomies ever
done, the procedure was only used for psychiatric illness." [10]

"One of the doctors who knew the truth was Dr. Bertram S. Brown,
executive director of the President's Panel on Mental Retardation,"
Kessler writes. "According to Dr. Brown, the fact that Rosemary could
do arithmetic meant that her IQ was well above 75, the cutoff used by
most states for purposes of classification in schools to define mental
retardation." At the age of nine, she did problems like 428 ื 32 =
13696, 3924 / 6 = 654. At age 16 she wrote to her father, "I would do
anything to make you so happy. I hate to disapoint [sic] you in anyway
[sic]." Her diary reveals an ability to write about and understand
various situations around her.

Kessler quotes Dr. Brown, a former director of the National Institute
of Mental Health, as saying, "If she did division and multiplication,
she was over an IQ of 75. She was not mentally retarded. It could be
she had an IQ of 90 in a family where everyone was 130, so it looked
like retardation, but she did not fall into IQ 75 and below, which is
the definition of mental retardation. There is no way I can picture
her at less than a 90 IQ, but in that family, 90 would be considered
retarded."

Kessler adds that in Dr. Brown's opinion, the family's treatment of
Rosemary led to her mental illness. "I think it's likely she was
somewhat slower than the others. Then she was treated as if she was
retarded. Then it becomes reactive depression, including rages and
loss of control. That is mental illness. The reason she got
depressed was that she reacted to being treated as a lesser member of
the family." While the children tried to include her in their
activities, "given the highly competitive environment of the Kennedy
family, they could not help but to communicate to her that she was not
up to their standards." The fact that Joe banished Rosemary to live
with his aide demonstrated his rejection of her. "The stigma of mental
illness in those days was like tuberculosis or cancer or worse. Mental
retardation is more benignly not your fault. Even in [Dr. Watt's]
day, performing a lobotomy on someone who was mentally retarded would
have been medical malpractice."

According to Kessler, Dr. Brown called the suppression of the truth
"the biggest mental health cover-up in history". Since the "public
story" is still that Rosemary was retarded, the "lack of support for
mental illness is part of a total lifelong family denial of what was
really so. Some of us knew the secret and kept it secret. "

This is what they did to the mentally ill in Massachusetts back then.
The Eugenic Movement had a lot of followers in Massachusetts. Very
evil Kennedy!:-(

Re: Rosemary Kennedy was mentally ill!

In 1933 Hitler complimented the Massachusetts Eugenics Society,
and there was so much eugenics in the state government that, in
reciprocation Massachusetts uniformed its state troopers in Nazi
uniforms.
Today, those Nazi uniforms are being fazed out and replaced by
Smokie the Bear uniforms, but, watch out for those troopers who are
holding on to their Nazi uniforms!